http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE Palestinians, you may have noticed, have changed their tune.
When the current orgy of violence against Israelis began last fall, the
explanation out of Gaza City -- faithfully echoed by most of the Western
media -- was that it was all Ariel Sharon's fault. His visit to the
Temple Mount on September 28, it was said, outraged and infuriated
Palestinians. That, apparently, was why they took to hurling rocks,
firing guns, demolishing Jewish shrines, lynching Israeli drivers, and
bombing children taking the bus to school.

There were always a few problems with this explanation, such as the
fact that the violence began before Sharon's visit. But it is
especially untenable now: Even Palestinians admit it isn't true.

"Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the despised
Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong," Imad al-Faluji, the
Palestinian minister of communications, declared in March. "This
Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return
from the Camp David negotiations."

So the party line has been updated. The real cause of the violence,
Palestinians now claim, is the growth of Israeli communities in Gaza and
the West Bank.

"A cessation of settlement activities is part of a cessation of
violence," says Faisal Husseini, a prominent Palestinian official.
Jibril Rajoub, one of Arafat's top militiamen, seconds the motion.
"Everybody should know," he announced, "that those settlements are the
cancer and the reason at all times for tension."

This excuse, too, has found a ready reception in the media --
especially since the international fact-finding committee headed by
George Mitchell recommended, as a "confidence-building measure," that
Israel declare a moratorium on expanding the settlements. When
Secretary of State Colin Powell briefed the press on the Mitchell
Committee report, he was repeatedly asked what Washington would do to
compel Israel to freeze its settlements. No reporter seemed to wonder
what Washington would do to compel Arafat to stop his murderous
offensive.

It hasn't taken long for the Palestinian line -- Jewish settlements
justify Arab violence -- to become conventional wisdom. "Stop those
settlements," commands The Economist in its leading article this week;
it asserts that Jewish neighborhoods in the territories "negate all
chance of Palestinian-Israeli peaceful coexistence." The Chicago
Tribune editorializes: "There is little incentive for the Palestinians
to return to the table without an Israeli freeze on settlements."

Nonsense.

Eight months ago, Israel offered not only to freeze its settlements
but to dismantle most of them and pull out of 98 percent of the
territories altogether. Ehud Barak laid on the negotiating table nearly
everything the Palestinians had demanded: all of Gaza and the West Bank,
a sovereign state, power-sharing in Jerusalem, control of the Temple
Mount. Arafat responded by kicking the table over and starting a war.

In other words, Palestinian violence did not explode because Israel
refused to give up the settlements. It exploded because Israel agreed to
do so.

The Arab rocks, bullets, Molotov cocktails, and suicide bombs of the
past eight months are no different from the Arab rocks, bullets, Molotov
cocktails, and suicide bombs of the past eight years -- the years of the
Oslo "peace" process. The more Israel has agreed to give, the more
enraged and uncompromising the Palestinian reaction has been. A
paradox? Only to those who have never mastered the fundamental lesson
of Appeasement 101: Give a dictator the sacrifice he demands and you
inflame his appetite for more.

To insist that Israel "stop those settlements" in exchange for an
end to Arab violence is to insist that Oslo be upended. The
Israeli-Palestinian accords have never barred Israel from building or
expanding settlements in the territories; the ultimate fate of those
communities has always been one of the "permanent status" issues to be
decided at the end of the process.

By contrast, the starting point of the peace process -- the
foundation on which it was built -- was that Palestinian violence had
ended. "The PLO commits itself ... to a peaceful resolution of the
conflict between the two sides," reads the document that Arafat signed
on September 9, 1993, "and declares that all outstanding issues relating
to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations.... The PLO
renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence."

That was the promise that earned Arafat his invitation to the White
House, his handshake from Rabin, his Nobel peace prize. That was the
promise in exchange for which Israel gave Arafat land and power, money
and weapons, diplomatic recognition and the status of a peace partner.
The Palestinians did not retain the right to resort to rocks and bullets
and bombs whenever they find it useful. They did not promise to end the
violence only if Israel agreed to their every demand. They promised to
end the violence for good.

If that promise was a lie, the entire peace process is a lie. Is
it? Look at the Middle East and draw your own conclusion.
pleased.